Help

Newsletter

SCLC leaders continue struggle for civil rights

For some time now, the Jacksonville chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has been trying to ignite flames for social justice here.

In January, it formed a chapter of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee after a melee erupted at the Hollywood River City 14 movie theater last Christmas night when 12 youths tried to rush in without paying. It sparked a fracas that involved 600 people.

To the SCLC, the incident, which mostly involved African-American youth, was a reminder that more needed to be given a voice as well as an understanding as to how their behavior could subject them to the kind of stereotyping that would not only hurt them but their community as well.

And in February, SCLC members marched in front of the Duval County Courthouse each day — even in the cold and in the rain — while Michael Dunn was on trial for fatally shooting 17-year-old Jordan Davis after the two argued over loud music.

They wanted everyone to know that when it comes to getting people fired up about racial and social justice, it’s not enough to just work behind the scenes but to become part of the scenery.

And recently at its Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Dinner, where it honored 12 people and organizations for their contributions to racial and social justice, it brought in a legendary firebrand — the Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian.

Vivian, one of King’s lieutenants during the civil rights movement, is known for getting up in the face of Jim Clark, the sheriff of Dallas County, Ala., which included Selma, and pointedly questioning him about his refusal to allow African-Americans to get inside the courthouse to register to vote.

That was in 1965 — a time when only 1 percent of African-Americans were registered to vote in Selma. When Vivian refused to back down, Clark, an avowed segregationist, punched him so hard that he broke his hand.

Yet Vivian, who last year was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, didn’t talk about finding the strength to defy as much as he talked about finding the strength to love.

“We produced the greatest man of love,” said Vivian, who is now 89. “We produced the greatest man of love in modern times. He was telling us all the time that you’ve got to love one another … if you’re going to have a civilization, you can’t have one without loving one another. You can’t have one [a civilization] where everyone is fighting over money and looking down at [each other] instead of looking up at.”

“The struggle is: ‘an you love one another?”

Vivian said that as white people become a minority, being able to love each other becomes more important than ever, because that’s the key to working together.

Yet, he said, “We can’t have love and truth until we have justice. Justice is what it’s all about.”

But on many fronts, he said, justice and fairness is becoming more elusive.

“We’ve got a million black men in jail, and every time you look up you find they didn’t do it,” Vivian said. “Now the billionaires want more than a billion … you go further and further away [from a democracy] if you’re dealing with a few rich people who are running the entire state.

“The thing we’re really going to lose in this process, black or white, is the democracy we’ve got …”

Vivian rekindled memories of the civil rights movement, but most of all he reminded everyone that the struggle wasn’t over. The local SCLC is working to continue that struggle.